Poets Are Particularly Adept At “Packaging” Big Ideas for Brands

Do copywriters write well in other forms? Does it matter? Yes and yes.

For professional writers, there is the literary market, the entertainment market, the journalism market, and the advertising market. When you work in advertising, all of the sister industries are part of the big picture. When you go to bat for a brand, you rely on the same narrative structures that novelists use, you write dialogue like a screenwriter, and you tell long-form brand-sponsored stories in print and broadcast, like a journalist.

 You will also want to pack your sentences with the power of poetry.

Poems, like ads, utilize dense language to convey big ideas quickly and memorably. For instance, here’s a new poem from copywriter Jim Mitchem in Charlotte, NC.

56, a poem

The world says I’m too old.
To think.
To hustle.
To fuck.
But the truth is, I’m mostly muscle.
My aim is true.
My brain unstuck.
And one day,
If you’re lucky,
You’ll finally come to see,
How with age comes wisdom
And what it’s like
To be me. pic.twitter.com/kzdjeTtYZh

— Jim Mitchem ? (@jmitchem) August 6, 2020

Here’s another opening to critique ageism, but Jim just did. Let’s give the poet the last word.

Talented Writers Can Learn To Make Ads Sing

Here’s an excellent poem by aspiring copywriter Nikki Gary, a recent graduate in advertising from the University of Illinois and an emerging Emerging Voice on Adpulp.com.

kentucky
metal floor bobbing
forward along a blue space
that never seems to end.

they all fit between the invisible
walls of what kept them afloat,
too young to be drunk and too

old? too old to ignore the fact
that this would end one day.
small square grass patch

along the river kept inside
cartoon character fishing
poles, eight french braids,
and under the sycamore, big belly laughs.
the kind that make the house shake.

I also like some of the work in Nikki’s spec book. I like this poem even more. If I had the capacity to hire her on the strength of this poem alone, I would.

A Fragment of My Verse

I also write poems. I wrote this one recently.

Before the Birds

Up before the birds
In the milking hour
Quiet night free hand
Poems like rocks fall
From the boulders that roll me
Over in my sleep

A poem is not a poem
Unpolished
First, you hold the piece
You feel its heft, it’s pull and pulse
You weigh tossing the pebble
You want to give it
Back to the river
Back to the night

Do you think a poem
Is a fragile thing?
A literary object
Under glass?
Words like wings
Lift the burdens of sorrow
In the poem, we rise

The composer’s notes
Are incomprehensible
On the page
The composer’s music moves
People in waves
Rhythmic, steady
Forever

Here you have truth
Grenades for the fibs
You tell yourself
Something stronger for the lies
You are told
Boom bah
Boom bah
There was nothing
Now there is something

Pieces put together
Universal order
Stars beam bright
Debris fields become
Fields of inquiry
Fields of golden maize
On our plate
Particles
Gathered appetites fed

What does this have to do with advertising? Poems don’t sell! Poetry is a non-transactional media. Instead, poems make you feel and think. Because of this, today’s ad makers and brand builders have much to learn from poetry and poets.

Writers and artists add beauty, truth, and meaning to the world. Without beauty, truth, or meaning in your corporate communications, you have little to offer that’s worthy of anyone’s attention.